Radio frequency identification (“RFID”) systems include RFID readers communicating with RFID tags via radio waves. The RFID readers send radio signals via antennas, which are received by the RFID tags. The RFID tags may be passive, semi-active or active. The passive RFID tags are the most common and least costly and derive energy for operation from the transmitted signal from the RFID reader thereby illuminating the RFID tag. The semi-active and active RFID tags have independent power sources for processing functions and for independent or enhanced transmit functions. After the RFID tag receives enough energy to respond, and the proper interrogation sequence is generated by An RFID reader, the RFID tag replies with information (e.g., payload information) thereabout, which is usually a unique identification number (also referred to as an “ID”) or other information available to the RFID tag. The RFID reader receives the identification number from the RFID tags in response to the transmitted signal by the RFID reader.
For purposes of a brief introduction, FIGS. 1 to 6 illustrate diagrams introducing foundational concepts regarding RFID technologies and the use thereof in the supply chain management of the retail industry or other industries. Referring initially to FIGS. 1A and 1B, illustrated are diagrams of typical RFID tags, of which other physical configurations are possible. The RFID tags each typically include an RFID microchip 110, a chip carrier or strap 120 and an antenna 130. As an example regarding passive RFID tags, the RFID tag collects the radiated energy of the transmitted signal from an RFID reader and uses the collected energy to control a modulation thereof within the RFID microchip 110. By changing an impedance of the antenna 130 of the RFID tag, the incident signal is either substantially reflected back to the RFID reader or it is not. This basic modulation mechanism is used in RFID applications from tracking motor vehicles on toll roads to tracking animals.
Turning now to FIG. 2, illustrated is a perspective view of an RFID tag 210 embedded within a standard paper adhesive label 220 and applied to a product (e.g., case) 230. The aforementioned application is a common application for RFID technologies in supply chain management, but RFID tag only applications (i.e., without the label) are also used. Regarding FIGS. 3A to 3D, illustrated are diagrams demonstrating an operation of an RFID reader 310 and RFID tag 330. FIG. 3A illustrates the RFID reader 310 transmitting a signal through an antenna 320 to an RFID tag 330 on a product (e.g., case) 340. FIG. 3B illustrates the RFID tag 330 absorbing the signal from the transmitted inbound signal from the RFID reader 310. FIG. 3C illustrates the RFID tag 330 using the collected energy to control a modulation of the transmitted signal and, by altering the impedance of an antenna thereof, the RFID tag 330 modulates the amount of the reflected signal (and data available to the RFID tag 330) back to the RFID reader 310. The term modulation generally refers to a range of techniques for encoding information on a carrier signal (e.g., a sine-wave signal) and is typically performed by a modulator. FIG. 3D illustrates the RFID reader 310 sending information associated with the RFID tag 330 back to a computer 350 so that the information can be used for other applications.
The RFID tags typically include an identification number stored in memory of a microchip thereof in a format consistent with EPCGlobal or other standards such as International Organization for Standardization (“ISO”) ISO18006. A few examples of industry recognized standards include EPCGlobal release EPC Specification for Class 1 Gen 1 RFID Specification, November 2002 and EPC Specification for Class 1 Gen 2 RFID Specification, December 2004 (see, also, a related publication entitled “Whitepaper: EPCglobal Class 1 Gen 2 RFID Specification,” published by Alien Technology Corporation, Morgan Hill, Calif., 2005), which are incorporated herein by reference. An example of an identification number is a serialized global trade identification number (“SGTIN”) conforming to an EPCGlobal standard Class 1 Gen 1 96 bit RFID tag. For instance, the SGTIN “01 1234567 123456 123456789” includes a header “01,” a manufacturer code “1234567,” a object class “123456,” and a serial number “123456789.” The SGTIN provides an example of an identification number for an application of RFID technologies to supply chain management.
Significant compliance mandates are being placed on the use of RFID technologies for use in tracking products of all types. Present systems are unable to satisfy the mandates, in general, and if the systems approach satisfying such mandates, the cost thereof is prohibitive. Retailers are now adopting RFID technologies across a broad range of products and placing mandates on suppliers to provide products with RFID tags (and potentially a label) on cases and pallets of products with stock keeping unit identifiers (“SKUs”). An SKU is a unique name or number assigned to a product for ease of use and tracking throughout manufacturing and supply chain management systems. Present mandates provide that the RFID tags be encoded with unique values and follow prescribed RFID standards set by the standards body of choice by the customers. In addition, no single standard enjoys universal acceptance, so multiple standards are being adopted.
Turning now to FIGS. 4 and 5, illustrated are diagrams demonstrating scan points for a distribution center and retail location, respectively, for a supply chain network. Major retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart) are leading the RFID mandates and the Department of Defense (“DoD”) and the healthcare industry, among others, are following their lead with RFID requirements on cases and pallets of shipped products. Present plans for initial rollouts include scan points at five places in the supply chain network including two at a distribution center (including a receiving location 410 and a shipping location 420 as illustrated in FIG. 4) and three at a retail location (including a receiving location 510, entrance to a retail floor 520 and a trash compactor 530 as illustrated in FIG. 5). Future plans will increase and refine tracking and tracking locations. Requirements of this type are disruptive to suppliers' operations, systems, personnel, costs and schedules. In addition, RFID mandates have imposed constraints on the suppliers and the constraints have generated additional problems as described below.
Attempts to respond to the basic changes in the supply chain management have not been successful. Suppliers have implemented various manual processes to meet the compliance requirements, which have proven to be costly, inefficient, and prone to errors that are difficult to detect and correct. Compounding the problem is the fact that future requirements will be more extensive (more RFID-enabled distribution centers, SKUs and suppliers) than those now in place and these will only further aggravate the problem. In light thereof, existing solutions concentrate on more hardware and labor to address the problem, which only ramps up the amount of losses incurred to implement the processes and further aggravates the issues of error checking, error detection and error correction. Additionally, expanding the manual approaches is not efficiently scalable or tenable.
Turning now to FIG. 6, illustrated is a diagram demonstrating a manual process for the application of an RFID tag on a product (e.g., a case and a pallet). The manual process is performed by a computer operator 610 operating a computer 620 with a spreadsheet and an RFID label printer with integrated reader 630 printing labels (one of which is designated 640) with RFID tags for manual application by another operator 650 on an RFID-tagged case 660 and an RFID-tagged pallet 670. A case designated 680 is a non-RFID-tagged case and a pallet designated 690 is a non-RFID-tagged pallet. The illustrated approach provides a single pallet going through the manual process, of which the manual process becomes exponentially more difficult as multiple pallets and cases are added thereto.
The manual process provides a first step toward the growth of RFID technologies. For instance, the manual process enables the encoding of RFID tags (at the case and pallet level), allows operators to print onto a human readable label, and enables RFID tags to be manually applied to cases and pallets. The manual process also allows operators to track the identification numbers for the products and the numeric constructions for the products and customers via a spreadsheet. It is possible, however, that the same product will have to be encoded to different standards depending upon the customer. While the manual process allows businesses to scale, it is labor and hardware intensive and leads to a proportional increase in errors associated with the application of the RFID tags on products and the like.
While the manual process provides some advantages, such a manual process is not conducive to a full scale proliferation of RFID technologies, especially in supply chain management. For instance, the manual process does not automatically qualify a uniqueness of case and pallet identification numbers (also referred to as “case identifier or case ID” and “pallet identifier or pallet ID,” respectively). Additionally, the manual process does not automatically integrate with external systems such as enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) systems and warehouse management systems (“WMS”) to make RFID standards determinations. The manual process also does not readily integrate multiple disparate systems and aggregate the case identification number and pallet identification number associations automatically. For compliance, it is beneficial to know which unique case ID is assigned to each unique pallet ID. As an example, suppose a pallet ID “123456789” is associated with case IDs “1001,” “1002,” to “1050.” If the pallet ID is read at a scan point, it would be beneficial to know that 50 case IDs are associated therewith. In much the same way, if any case ID of the 50 unique case identification numbers was read, it would be beneficial to know the pallet identification number “123456789” by default. Again, the manual process does not provide such a tracking capability for the supply chain management system.
The manual processes exhibit many other limitations as hereinafter provided. For instance, the manual process does not instruct personnel of proper RFID tag placement, which is very different from barcode labels that require line of sight to work. The RFID tags also depend on RFID friendliness or physical characteristics of the product being tagged, and the placement of the RFID tag is important for acceptable performance. In accordance therewith, the manual process does not automatically apply labels to cases and qualify RFID tag placement tolerances. In addition, the manual process does not control the material handling equipment (“MHE”) systems to perform automation and integrate with other automated systems including MHE devices such as conveyers and forklifts used to move products in the supply chain. The manual process further does not align cases for automatic RFID tag application and send shipment information to a receiver. In accordance therewith, the manual process does not validate applied case and pallet RFID tags and automate the handling of rejected RFID tags (e.g., for encoding failures). The aforementioned limitations associated with the manual processes detract from the proliferation of RFID technologies in, for instance, the supply chain management systems.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a system and method that addresses the above issues in a cost effective manner that is scalable and capable of being integrated into existing manufacturing and distribution center processes concentrating on supply chain management and other applications.